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Um, why is Tony Daniel on the cover but not the
interior? Right at the conclusion of a story arc that he drew?

REGGIE NO LIKE.

But that doesn’t mean the issue is necessarily bad…or
necessarily good. Find out which I think in my review of Suicide Squad #19, right chea!

Explain
It!

While the Suicide Squad is contending with dire
wraiths from the Phantom Zone…Sphere, and Zod is going buck wild trying to
murder Cosmonut, Cyborg Superman and the Eradicator show up to bring some more
Kryptonians to the mix. They actually do calm things down a bit, except for
Amanda Waller who is absolutely freaking the fuck out because she might have
caused an unstoppable Armageddon by retrieving Zod from that Russian prison in
the first place. And you know what? I like seeing Amanda Waller freak out over
this. Too often, she’s the one thinking ten steps ahead, seeming to have lost
when she’s actually won, everything going perfectly to plan and all that, and
finally she’s committed a major fuck-up and has no one to blame but herself. Cyborg
Superman and the Eradicator only want Zod to join their Superman Revenge Squad,
while Zod wants to fulfill his commitment to free all the bad dudes from the
Black Sphere and…I dunno, destroy everything? The end goal is unclear. I guess
Zod is only worrying about the freeing part, the rest is up to them.

Being basically the last Kryptonian cop, doesn’t want
the criminals from the Phantom Zone released because…well, they’re criminals.
Cyborg Superman doesn’t mind who gets released from what, so long as he has
Zod’s fealty. The response is for Zod to rip Cyborg Superman’s face off, which
was pretty satisfying. You ain’t no Kryptonian, Hank Henshaw, you’re just
faking the funk. About now is when Harley goes apeshit over her lost love Rick
Flag, which kicks the Phantom Zone eels back into action and everything goes
haywire again. After Cyborg Superman pieces himself together, it’s a Kryptonian
Battle Royale in one ring while the Suicide Squad chases Phantom bubbles in
another. Still in shock, Waller figures out that they can shut down the Phantom
Zone by chucking the Kryptonite-laced brain bomb that Zod lobotomied out of his
head last issue, along with some extra TNT for good measure.

Rick Flag wakes up from his nap, and after blowing
off Harley Quinn, he offers to sacrifice himself to the Phantom Zone—but then
Amanda Waller says she’ll do it! The team is as surprised as I was, to see
Amanda Waller actually taking responsibility for the chaos she creates and her
willingness to sacrifice herself for it. Of course, they’re not going to chuck
Waller into this thing, so while the team distracts the Kryptonians, Flag and
Waller run up to the Black Sphere, then Flag knocks Waller out before leaping
into the brink. Having sewn up the Phantom Zone, Zod acquiesces for some weird
reason, then decides to join the two guys he was just fighting to the death
mere seconds ago. In the end, Belle Reve looks like a teenager’s bedroom, Rick
Flag is dead, and Harley Quinn has gone completely cuckoo bonkers again as a
result. All’s well that ends well!

There were a lot of goofy moments in this issue that
I didn’t detail, and they really tied together the relentless action that’s
driven the last few issues. I’m not complaining though. Neil Edwards did a
capable job here, but what happened to Daniels? I would have liked to see him
close out the arc. Still, this whole thing was a lot of fun, had a lot of silly
comic book tropes that I really enjoyed, and included Amanda Waller getting her
comeuppance! I mean, sort of…she only had a realization, actually. But it’s
something. Glad to see the back-ups gone, glad to see these stories breathe a
bit and give us the kind of interactions that make a series like this readable.
Good job, folks.

Bits and
Pieces:

The story of Zod the Odd Bod on the Squad concludes, and in hindsight it's been a lot of fun. The dialogue is good, the action is fierce, and this comic embraces silly comic book weirdness in a way that I really enjoy. It's worth mentioning that Tony S. Daniel does not draw this issue, but it's still a really fun conclusion to a very strange story.

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